Is the Blockchain Industry a Joke?
5 years ago in #cryptocurrency by lukestokes (76)
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Thanks for a thoughtful article Luke... and yes, I did go read the other article.
History inevitably repeats itself.
You could substitute in "dot com" or "Internet" for "blockchain" and end up with much the same set of parameters. 99% of the wildly hyped dot-com businesses of 1999-2001 had no business even EXISTING, and yet people threw billions of dollars of venture capital at them, much like a latter-day Klondike gold rush. It just seems to be part and parcel of the evolution of disruptive technologies... of which we've recently had mobile phones, the Internet and personal computers. They all changed how we "do life," and they all experienced massive turbulence and shakeouts.
You and I both know that there are probably thousands of blockchain products out there with little more than a white paper that uses the words "blockchain" and "token" rather often. They never had any business existing, and yet they are part of the evolution of the industry.
Now, we have some additional challenges to overcome... in that the ideals we hold dear of banking the unbanked and global non-bank currencies have been completely usurped by ambitious coders in search of the magic formula score themselves a lambo. As a result, we now get to wear down the perception that cryptos are these exotic super high risk asset derivatives that have become so far removed from simply being used as a way for me to buy cool hand made wood carvings from a dude in Somalia via his cell phone. Which makes no sense as long as we have a so-called "currency" that can fluctuate 300% in a week!
For as long as I have been involved in this gig, I have been railing (onto deaf ears, mostly) that we need to get some functional use cases in place if this ship is ever going to GO anywhere. Someone needs to start building peer-to-peer commercial marketplaces (like an eBay/craigslist clone) that operate 100% in crypto so you DON'T have to exit to fiat to make the transaction. Then — and pretty much only then — will we be able to authentically look at someone and answer sensibly, when they ask "Yeah, but what is this GOOD for?"
Bit of a side-rant on your blog, I realize... but I feel it can't be said enough times!
Thanks for your in-depth thoughts.
and...
distributed ledger technology?
Thanks. Fixed. :)
Crypto has unfortunately seen many attempts to mix water and oil unsuccessfully. There are very few competent people in this space on the business end. There has to be a real, non-contrived, long-term demand for a product or service, otherwise it's a money grab.
With crypto, what cryptocurrencies are there with real value?
Bitcoin acts as a digital gold standard to measure the value of all other crypto, regardless of whether people believe or agree with that or not, it's just how it is. So therefore I own Bitcoin.
Hive is a censorship resistant social media DApp ecosystem with it's own economy that has been tested numerous times by bad actors, and with each successive attack the network is fine tuned. As we move into a more authoritarian period of time, Hive will naturally fill this demand for censorship resistant media. Therefore I own Hive.
There's really not much else I find interesting in the crypto space to be honest. I used to own ethereum, but I find that its purpose has mostly been served and now with authorities cracking down on ICOs I don't find any value in that chain personally. Hive does everything Ethereum can do much more efficiently.
I own a bit of XRP, but it exists on shaky ground.
The only other coin that comes to mind is Monero, which serves as a privacy coin. I however do not own any Monero as I don't have any need to. There's a number of other privacy coins as well, but they all fall under the same umbrella.
Everything else out there? Most of it falls under PT Barnum's old quote about there being a sucker born every minute. It reminds me of people in the US who are putting their stimulus check into the stock market and causing a bear market rally to enrich the wealthy even more before they do another sell off. If it wasn't so sad it would be funny.
But crypto sadly attracts all the wrong kinds of entrepreneurs who have never run or operated a business, and have taken in millions of dollars from young investors based on a pie in the sky dream of everyone getting rich without anything actually being produced or any demand being met.
As long as hive continues on its current path I see value. I don't really see value in too many other crypto spaces sadly.
Your comment reminded me of this post from a few years ago.
It will be interesting to see what projects are still around a few years from now, but the Internet went through similar phase also, right? Most of the companies burning through money before the .com bubble burst were worthless also.
I own some Monero. Same reason I have some junk silver and a little bit of gold. Good for a rainy day in case you need it. If the government went crazy and cracked down on all cryptocurrencies, I'd be happy to have some private coins I could use.
The author is pretty much spot on with my thoughts oftentimes after being in crypto since 2013. But that is also my thoughts when I'm deep in the weeds on anything and focus on the negatives or put a negative spin on it.
There is a lot that I don't like about the crypto industry. The author addressed a lot of the issues but I would say knowing that Bitcoin worked better in 2013 than it works now is pretty sad. The inability to scale is sad.
Also seeing all the scammers doing way better than legit projects and legit people in the industry. It is pretty embarrassing.
So much of this industry is just making a crypto that will make you more of that same coin overtime. We see that with so many projects but most of the time the crypto isn't being used for anything functional.
You almost can't really sell something in this industry that is something in real life because unless you position it that it is going to make someone rich people don't care about it.
Also nothing makes sense oftentimes. The pumps are unpredictable and supply, inflation, functionality seem to have little correlation.
We could rip apart the supplement industry the same way. The energy drink industry. The fitness industry. The makeup industry. The wedding industry. Funeral home industry. Pretty much anything to be honest.
Once you are deeply involved in something you find out all aspects of it and it is easy to get burnt out.
I guess I will still promote the good parts of crypto and if someone buys a shirt, jersey, hat, or buys a ticket to a game they will actually be entertained and get something real. Big IF....on 2020 with the virus but it could still happen. Probably not in California.
I think this applies to many blockchain users, as well.
Many of the more successful posts here are written about how cool the platform is, to be a little sarcastic.
this kind of applies to ALL media, these days ;>
it's still well within reach. as you noted, we are still learning to use this tool, and I second that specifying "us" as as users
do we need more outreach? certainly, but we also need to think about why we are here
When Lambo, HODL etc, when moon, the crypto market is a strange one, one major challenge whenver we mention we invest is, oh that currency for buying drugs and essentially hiding your money, to which we reply, oh yes of course.
We tell them crypto has somewhat evolved since the first days of Bitcoin, especially with cryptos like ETN, topping up phones, topping up your eleccy even helping charities.
Both sides need to be seen, the thing about ETN is they concentrate on the 99% who don't have a clue about crypto, granted this went Electroneum fast, however we also hold Ethereum, Ripple etc.
It's an exciting time, great write up :)
He is definitely not wrong in his assessment of blockchain it is a joke, the vast majority of it is a joke even big coins with massive market caps by crypto standards aren’t solving shit or going to go anywhere in the future! All the are, are opportunities for people to experiment and for us to give more people exposure to blockchain
Like the internet many websites failed but even when it did and still does you have an army of coders and users willing to go again and they eventually find their talents valued somewhere else
We can always point to anecdotal evidence of we are not the same as this and that but I think blockchain people need a little more self awareness the tribalism can be positive we need people who believe In the space for sure just not damming people who don’t!
I think it’s a fair critique and as blockchain enthusiasts we should acknowledge it take it on the chain and try to move away from some of those faults
I'm not going to comment on the general purpose of this post as I am too ignorant to even sound like I am making sense. What I will do is personalise some of the issues raised.
People who understand or know how to work with crypto/blockchain are snobbish about it. When asked questions or for help, they either tell the asker to do a google or else they give a complicated reply which only someone who already knows the field can understand.
I was there when the internet first started and what you are seeing happen now did happen at various times as those who were ahead of the main population saw opportunites to grow or to make money. It comes with the frontier mentality? I hope so. (lol, saying this reminded me of how wonderful I felt when I bought my first 5GB hard drive!)
What mostly interested me was your promotion of FIO - I am trying to start a new business on line and have been trying to learn how to create/install and use payment gateways. It struck me that FIO could be useful but there is one aspect of trade not handled by FIO, as far as I saw.
If I am charging, for example, US$60 and someone wants to pay me in their own local currency, there are many companies offering apps that help with the transaction and they ensure the payment is the equivalent of my price. I do not see that with FIO. It would need to know what the exchange rate between the ETH and USD is, for instance, so as to make the calculation and guide the buyer.
I hope my comment made some sense and look forward to hearing that FIO can now do the conversion, as it would help me offer another way for customers to make their payment. I also have to pay them back some money every now and then, so it would work for me as the payer also. The fixed annual fee is low and simplifies the costing so that I do not even have to charge my customer one cent.
Thanks for your comment. I don't agree with your point 1 because many who did figure it out are telling you exactly how they figured it out. They searched google, spent hours (days sometimes) in forums, they studied, read, tinkered, practiced, failed, lost money, made money, etc. They put in the time and effort. They did the work.
You know what can also sound snobbish? When someone who hasn't put in the work talks to someone who has spent years putting in the work and just expects everything to be handed over to them in simple terms. This is complex stuff and it doesn't work that way. Sufficiently complex systems can't always be explained in simple terms. I tried with videos years ago which you can see here http://understandingblockchainfreedom.com/ but ultimately, this is complex stuff and you have to put in the work to understand it.
As for FIO, it has no intention of being a crypto payment processor. There are many out there like BitPay and Coinbase Commerce and others that will do what you're wanting. We plan to integrate with them, but we won't be holding or dealing with any user funds or money transmission or conversion of any kind.
did you just used that theory about news titles ending with question mark to your advantage? :D
so almost a hour later, i feel a bit smarter. could have take some notes form the article, try to write something smart, but being more than 2 years on steem/hive i still feel crypto stupid, and it would be a waste of time. maybe i am the example of transitional phase in evolution from blockchain/crypto nerds users to blockchain/crypto unaware people using the technology :D
i am for sure a member of a cult, and i feel author is right about, as you called them, fake communities that don't care about technology and are there just for pump and dump. What i found interesting with hive community is that a lot of users were ready to defend the use case of the platform (blockchain) when they could maybe earn more if they pushed the fake justin sun agenda. or maybe i am just naive and it was all a plan to double the money.
I often use questions for titles as they express what I'm thinking at the time. Many of my posts are ways to get my thoughts out of my head and into the world for discussion.
Not sure what you mean about doubling the money as Steem isn't even a blockchain anymore. Any funds there are not secure, in my opinion. I'm selling them as soon as my power downs allow. I have no interest in holding pretend blockchain tokens.
It is just a conspiracy theory :D i am really not sure what steem is right now. i had a thought of milking, did some weeks of scheduled posts but it just felt blah. i need to see what exchange is taking it and sell this last 3 weeks of powerdown (was lazy, did not want to register to new exchanges after the hf)
I think what the ICO fever did was that it lowered the barrier to entry to get funding to almost non-existent. At its peak, projects that only have a whitepaper were able to raise 10s or 100s of millions of initial funding. On hindsight it looked silly, but at that point in time many "investors" were blinded by greed.
Naturally with such easy access to funds, most of these "startups" are jokes and are doomed to fail. It is incredible to see how millions of startup funds get squandered over a course of 2-3 years.
There is a reason, why i am just in 3 Blockchain Projekts since 2013. ;-) Less is more in this little Bubble world, but most people will do not understand it.
Blockchain is not a new thing on the world, but with the infrasturcture of the Internet we didn´t see and saw the real potential of it.
I like your view about that all.
Salve
Alucian
Convenience without comprehension.
On the other hand, crypto offers inconvenience and punishes ignorance; pretty much the exact opposite.
FIO is trying to fix that. :)
Found from article above !
Feel free to fill this and find a Bingo or Bingos LOL
.
Yes, (Just responding to title)
How dare you. ;)
I doubt crypto will reach where we all thought it should go
It's still early.
Time will tell
Depends on where you thought it would go. The technology behind the internet existed for a couple decades before the world was ready for it. Give it another decade and crypto will be 100% ubiquitous. As for people who thought it would make everyone wealthy, that's just delusional.
We should give crypto 20 years then
It was fine until you mentioned hive, things are really fragile in crypto and after what happened to steem I don't know if hive will survive much either.
Do you know why Steem was taken over? If you do, you'll understand why Hive is so amazing and so much more secure. Layer zero security is the community that cares about decentralization. That's why Hive is secure and Steem is not.
steem was attacked and taken over by bad actors because it had tangible value in so many different ways. That value has since moved to Hive, along with improved security and the removal of Steemit Inc that was weighing the ecosystem down, so I would argue that Steem probably won't survive much longer, it just has no value left in it.
Your thought is so deep. Let's hope for the best ❤